


Along the Way

by devot (devotfeige)



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 09:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18826321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devotfeige/pseuds/devot
Summary: A few brief dips into Souji's childhood, some insight into his love of cats, and the death of an OC.





	Along the Way

**Author's Note:**

> originally written/posted to LiveJournal in 2010

"Nyaa-chan," Souji breathes in a voice that's barely a whisper, and a haunted look in grey eyes like none Yosuke's ever seen tells him better than to laugh at how ridiculous it sounds. For all the world he can't think of a less acceptable response.  
  
"She's--" Souji starts to say, but his mind is racing too fast for the words to make it to his lips in time, and Yosuke's seen that happen before, but only once. Souji's on his feet and the letter flutters to the floor and Souji's somewhere else entirely when Yosuke stoops over to pick it up.  
  
It's a formal letter, typed up on business paper, stark black on white text with pixel-perfect lettering. It reads like some kind of nightmare; all  _I regret to inform you that your father's mother has died_  and  _if we can be of any assistance_  and  _if there is anything of hers you'd like to keep, please get it at your earliest convenience as we've decided to sell the house._  
  
Yosuke wonders for a moment if either of Souji's parents have ever actually held a conversation with a human being before, much less their son.  
  
He barely has time to grab the other by the back of his jacket before he can stumble out the front door.  
  
"Where are you going?"  
  
"I have to--" Souji starts, and his hand slips from the door and he collapses against the wall beside it and there are tears in his eyes before he makes it to the floor. "I have to..."  
  
Yosuke sits next to him, one arm around his shoulder to hold him close, and waits for the storm to pass.  
  
The following day finds them a number of miles outside of Nagoya, at what Yosuke thinks might be the precise spot where city and rural surroundings clash into the briefest and most depressingly lost suburbia he's ever seen; cramped and claustrophobic without being stacked on top of itself in quite the way the city is. Souji turns the key to a small two-story house before standing at the doorway like he's expecting something, or remembering something, or trying very hard to not do either of those things.  
  


* * *

  
_I'm home_ , he called quietly, out of habit and observance of tradition, and gently pushed the door closed behind himself. When he turned to see her standing in the short hallway, he paused and shifted on his feet without knowing what to do, paralyzed by the awkwardness of finding someone there. Maybe she was mad that he was late--maybe she didn't want his parents to have left him with her for three whole months. Maybe she would make him leave.  
  
 _Welcome home_ , she said with a smile as she reached out to him,  _I was making lunch for tomorrow, would you like to help?_  
  
He remembers falling in love, in that moment.  
  


* * *

  
Yosuke steps into the house first, slipping off his shoes in the entrance hall before taking a few steps in to look around. Living room, dining room, kitchen, hall; he tries to imagine a single person living here, much less someone the age of his own grandparents, of which he has three. Souji only has-- _had_ \--the one, and this was her house, and now it is vast and empty and lonely and he can't imagine it ever looked much different than that anyway. It is too big a house for one person.  
  
Souji brushes past him, trailing his fingers along the molded railing fixed along the perimeter of the wall, and disappears into the living room. Yosuke follows, finding him kneeling in front of the couch, reaching under a cloth draped over a coffee table for something, sitting back and looking distant when he finds nothing. He tries an end table beside a recliner, pulls out a basket and searches inside. He stands, glances over the back of the couch, and there's a flash of something like the very beginning of panic in his eyes that causes Yosuke to reach out and clasp a hand over his shoulder. Souji blinks, looking as though he's just abruptly woken up, and shakes his head.  
  
"Sorry, I was--" he stops, sets his jaw, stares into the floorboards, "--never mind."  
  


* * *

  
_Oh, Sachi-chan, darling, I know you're down there._  She lifted the cloth draped over the coffee table with one foot and pulled at the ball of yarn that had been in her lap until a sharp tug on a loose end had knocked it to the floor. A paw reached out from the darkness to grab the string, holding it fast, and Souji stared wide-eyed with excitement and fascination. She bent over, reaching under the table, to extract a ginger tabby cat--white paws and tufted ears and a great bushy tail--before depositing him on the couch between herself and her grandson.  
  
 _Can I...?_  he spoke in a hushed tone, reaching out a hand tentatively, interrupted when the cat nudged his hand with its head, rubbing against it and his leg both before eventually settling down beside him, eyes closed as it purred loudly.  
  
 _Sachi-chan keeps me company_ , she told him with a smile,  _but he's not much help when it comes to knitting._  
  
Souji smiled shyly back, gathering up the yarn the cat had knocked onto the floor to hold in his lap, unraveling it by hand a little so that there was slack between where she was working and the wound ball he was holding;  _I can help._  
  
He remembers all of Sachi's hiding places like they were his own. In many ways, they were.  
  


* * *

  
Souji trudges up the stairs like there is a lead weight in his step, pausing in the hall at a closed door before turning the handle and pushing it open slowly to peer inside. The room is small and plain and looks far less lived in than the rest of the house. There's a bookshelf and a small, old TV on top of a dresser, and a western style bed against one wall. A chair, a desk, and he pulls open each of the drawers in turn before finding a plain black book with a folded piece of paper stuck somewhere between its empty pages. He opens it and is met with scrawlings that only vaguely resemble things like cats and birds and planes and the ocean.  
  
He turns to find Yosuke standing in the doorway, looking around with mild interest. It seems to only have just hit him that Souji might have actually spent any time in this house.  
  
"Was this your room?" he asks, and Souji smiles down at the piece of paper with his own name scrawled in one corner, neat but with certain strokes cramped together or spaced too far apart, "It was my father's, a long time ago. I stayed here sometimes, though."  
  
He hands the paper to Yosuke as he walks back out of the room, and Yosuke stands staring at it for a long moment afterward. In between the crude drawings of various animals and plants, the same awkward scrawl fills the page. In it, an eight year old Souji describes planes and airports and America, clipped and brisk and to the point in a way that sounds all too much like twenty-three year old Souji. He goes on to talk about 'Sachi-chan', which judging by the orange shape drawn next to that paragraph must have been the cat he's heard a little about over the past number of years. The letter ends by asking about 'Kei-chan' and promising to visit, but Yosuke's never heard the name and as far as he's aware Souji's grandmother only had one cat.  
  
He folds the letter and puts it in his pocket, taking one last look around and imagining an eight year old Souji sitting in the corner by the bookshelf, books splayed out across the floor in stacks of have and haven't read. He closes the door behind himself as he leaves.  
  


* * *

  
She gently closed the door behind herself as she entered, kneeling next to him where he sat against the corner and reaching out to pet the tiny grey kitten in his hands before lifting her hand to pat his head as well.  
  
 _Why can't I keep her?_  Souji asked forlornly, far from crying or begging--simply wanting to know. She wished she'd taught his father to be able to see that and recognize it for what it was. Souji rarely asked for anything beyond explanations, and for all his desire seemed to get them few and far between.  
  
 _You're going overseas to live for a year or two_ , she said.  _And both your parents have full-time jobs. There would be no one to take care of her._  
  
 _I would take care of her_ , he protested quietly.  
  
 _You would be at school._  
  
Humbled by the clean and factual presentation of matters, Souji hugged the kitten closely to himself for a long moment, knowing that there was no use in debating the subject any further but refusing to let her go so easily.  
  
 _Who will, then?_  
  
She smiled and took him by the hand, leading him downstairs to where a girl a few years older than he was sat at the kitchen table with her father. The girl grinned, kneeling in front of him to gently scratch behind the kitten's ears. It mewled in return, and Souji did his best to meet her gaze when she spoke;  _Does she have a name?_  
  
 _Kei-chan_ , he said quietly.  
  
 _Would it be okay if I took care of Kei-chan for you? I've always wanted a cat._  
  
 _Someone..._  he leaned in close, speaking quietly,  _someone has to be there for her when you're at school._  
  
 _My mother stays at home_ , the girl replied softly.  _She can watch her when I'm away._  
  
Souji nodded, satisfied with that arrangement, and gently moved the kitten to the girl's hands.  
  
His mother called it a done deal and thanked the girl's father, his father pat him on the head and told him the cat would probably be happier living in the place it was familiar with anyway, and Souji thought long and hard over that piece of information before retreating into his room again to wonder why  _he_  had to leave at the end of the week if that were the case.  
  
The morning that he was getting ready to leave, she pulled him aside and handed him a lovingly-made plush cat of grey and white. He'd hugged her with all the love and admiration an eight year old boy could have, and clutched the toy to his person long after the fact.  
  
He remembers the warmth and comfort that plush brought him in the years that followed; knowing that wherever he might go and whoever he might have to leave behind, it would always be there for him at the end of the day.  
  


* * *

  
Yosuke enters the master bedroom to find Souji sitting at the end of another western style bed, an orange plush toy in his hands.  
  
"This..." Souji speaks, like he's not really sure what to say, "This looks just like Sachi-chan."  
  
"Your grandmother's cat?" Yosuke asks, thinking back to the letter, and Souji nods in confirmation.  
  
"I didn't know she made one like this."  
  
"That's not what you were looking for?"  
  
"No."  
  
Yosuke glances around the room, finding a small box next to the bedside table that's nearly been pushed all the way under the bed. He pulls it out to examine it, finding it taped shut. The box bears both a name and an address, but the two don't match. The address he recognizes as Souji's uncle Dojima's. The house in Inaba where Souji had stayed six years ago.  
  
He wonders for the first time when exactly the last time Souji spoke to his grandmother actually was. If she knew to send it to Dojima because Souji lived in Inaba now and she just hadn't known his exact address, or if it had been too long and his parents were never in one place and she had no way of knowing and so it had been the only choice.  
  
When Souji looks up from the plush orange cat to ask what he's found, Yosuke offers him the box. He stares at it and at his own name marked clearly on the top for a long moment before sitting the toy aside to pull off the tape that holds the box shut. Inside he finds a letter and another plush cat--this one is grey. He sits motionless for a stretch of minutes, just looking at the thing, before finally hugging it close, a tension Yosuke hadn't noticed he was even carrying visibly lifting from his shoulders in the process.  
  
"Nyaa-chan," he whispers softly, "I was worried I wouldn't be able to find you."  
  
He hasn't so much as looked at the letter, which is short and plain and even from this angle Yosuke can make out the words  _I wanted to send Nyaa-chan home, where he belongs. Thank you for letting him keep me company for so long._  
  


* * *

  
He was fifteen when Sachi died. Fifteen and living in Tokyo when his father had handed him the phone and she'd told him the news.  
  
The very next day, he was at the post office.  
  
That night, he'd tossed and turned and thought of Sachi, and of his grandmother, and of Nyaa-chan.  
  
He remembers an ache he'd had to soothe with every stray cat he'd ever found from that day forth.  
  


* * *

  
He leaves the one that looks like Sachi with her at the funeral. Sachi had been hers, after all, and he knows all too well how painful it is to be separated from something you love so dearly.  
  
The first night they're home, he sleeps with Nyaa-chan tucked securely in his arms, and Yosuke wants to laugh and tell him that he looks ridiculous, but instead he reaches over to ruffle his hair affectionately and lets it go without comment.  
  
Eventually Nyaa-chan gets moved to the space beside the futon where Souji keeps his reading glasses, and on that night Yosuke holds him close and thinks aloud, "Maybe we should get a cat."  
  
Souji's already asleep.


End file.
